Months
Warnings: A bit of swearing.
Pairings: Sort of implied Faberry, Klaine, Finchel.
Notes: The ninth in a series of writing prompts I'm working my way through. A character study of Kurt, Quinn and Rachel at the closing of Season 2.
The summer vacation in Lima, Ohio, is a little less than two months.
A disillusioned Glee club returns from a failed Nationals competition New York, and they attempt to strip off all the unhappiness and the bitter disappointments of the last year. The weather is unnaturally hot, and filled with a dizzy sense of freedom and the impending doom of adult life the motley arrangement of teenagers try to figure out what the hell they're going to do with themselves.
Kurt Hummel is in love. His summer doesn't quite revolve around Blaine, because of course there's his play that he's writing, and daydreaming about Juillard, and sleepovers with Rachel and Mercedes and fishing with his Dad (which he hates). But he will admit that he spends a lot of time thinking about a pair of warm liquid hazel eyes and honey-brown skin and gelled-down hair that's adorably curly and springy when it's left alone. He wonders about what will happen when one of them brings up the idea of furthering the relationship and quickly shies away from the idea. For now it's deep kisses that get cut off abruptly, both of them blushing and sweaty, and it's singing duets together quietly, lying on Kurt's bed under the aircon with fingers loosely and gently linked, and it's watching movies together and dissecting the socio-political undertones of various romantic comedies. He thinks he has the soft timbre of Blaine's voice memorized, and he thinks he has the way Blaine's eyelashes flutter open when he's awaking from sleep down pat, and he likes it. All of it. If only the silly boy would agree to come to McKinley, join New Directions with him. Kurt broke free from Dalton and decided to face the music. Why can't Blaine?
Quinn Fabray looks at her soft blonde hair in her expensive, elegant mirror and has the sudden, horrible urge to take fistfuls of it and rip it right out of her head. She isn't sure what she wants anymore, but she knows that it's not…this. Cutting her hair alone didn't do it, although it is nice to feel the breeze on her shoulders, and not have to push endless sticky hair away from her neck in the summer heat. There's still an empty gap, yawning and aching there, and she still dreams of babies crying. So she spends the summer carefully reinventing herself. Cigarettes taste horrible at first, she finds, but she likes holding them, delicate between beautiful, black-nailed fingers, watching them smoulder away and spiral a thin wisp of smoke up into the air. It's pretty, in a destructive way. Next, she dyes her hair bright pink and it feels wonderful. There is a small part of her that realizes how stupid she's being, what a poster child for self-absorbed overly angsty teenagers she is, but she ignores it. One day she passes Rachel Berry on the street, purely by accident. Her former…enemy? friend? (Who even cares?) turns to look at her with wide-eyed shock, sweetly lip-glossed mouth open. Quinn Fabray saunters on past, hips swaying sarcastically, cigarette leaving a trail behind her. She laughs. It sounds a little bit too broken and harsh, but she likes it. Life's like that now.
Rachel Berry is in the same sort of new-relationship bliss that Kurt is, and she has a tremulous happy feeling in her chest that swells when she sees Finn, or even thinks about him, or the clean-soap-boy smell of him. There has been a never-ceasing flow of drama the last year and of course it's been tiring, but true to her form she's not letting herself go! She still spends every morning on the treadmill, enjoying the burn in her legs and the dragging breath in her chest. She does her vocal exercises, belting out notes that she couldn't reach a year ago, and she thinks of the lights of New York, glimmering and glittering just for her. She thinks of an audience, crying and cheering and yelling her name, their very eyes filled with her music and love of her music, and she pictures Finn there, Finn and Kurt and Blaine and Mercedes and her dads, all the wonderful people in her life right there behind her. A long time ago, she imagined Quinn Fabray there in the audience, blonde hair tumbling over her slim white shoulders, an understated but classy dress whispering of the lines of her body. When she actually got to know Quinn she realized that if Quinn was going to be anywhere near Rachel's performance, she'd be alongside her, winning the audience over with her grace and beauty. Now…now Quinn Fabray won't be in her audience at all, the closest she'll be is inhaling smoke into her lungs on the steps outside – and that does hurt, it does. But it won't do to dwell on the unhappy rebel who'd once been her fellow Glee club member. Some day Rachel Berry is going places. This isn't just a hopeless dream, this one, it's a reality and she knows it.
They all have their realities, they all have their places they are going. Sometimes it feels like they are just spinning around in circles in this town, moving and dancing around one another and distracting themselves from the true futility of their lives. This could be just another sultry, sticky summer, filled with procrastination and worry and the usual teenage bullshit, but the crunch is coming soon, soon high school will be ended with its Glee club and cliques and endless, pointless drama, and soon they will be thrown out into the real world, out of Lima's protective, strangling arms.
Kurt Hummel and Quinn Fabray and Rachel Berry cannot wait.
The world is there, and it is waiting, and they are racing towards it. It had better be ready.